Are Greeks Lazy?

Europe is a mess because Germans work hard and Greeks are shiftless. False!

Almost 150 years ago, the great English economic essayist Walter Bagehot pondered the problem of European monetary integration in the The Economist. At the time, Italy had just been unified in the wake of the Austro-Prussian War and it was clear that Germany, still divided into several separate political entities, was heading in that direction. How far would consolidation go, from an economic point of view? It was clear enough to Bagehot that a single European currency would never do, but two currencies might. Rather, he looked forward to a future in which “there would be one Teutonic money and one Latin money” and posited that “looking to the commercial activity of the Teutonic races, and the comparative torpor of the Latin races, no doubt the Teutonic money would be most frequently preferred.”

The language and reference to alleged racial differences between Latins and Teutons are outdated, but the basic economic claim remains.